What Is Intimacy in a Relationship? A Love Letter to Couples on What's Possible in Partnership

Brian Tohana

May 26, 2025

8 min read

Updated: Oct 13

A love letter to couples about intimacy in a relationship

If you're in a hard season right now, questioning whether your relationship is worth it, this piece is for you.

This one is a little different from my other articles. It's a love letter, written from my heart to couples, about what's possible in partnership when you keep choosing to grow together. In it, I share the North Star I hold for couples, what intimacy in a relationship really means to me, and why getting there takes more than better communication.

If you're in the thick of wondering whether to stay, you may also find it helpful to read my article on what to do when you're asking yourself whether to stay or go.

A Love Letter to Couples

It’s painful protecting yourself from the person you love. It’s painful trying to be understood and continually being dropped.

So, I want to invite you into what’s possible in partnership with a love letter to couples.

Because when things get hard, it’s easy to lose sight of why you’re doing this isn’t it? The 5% or 10% that isn’t working can overshadow the 90% that is, and suddenly, you start questioning:

Are we meant to be together? Is it really meant to be this hard? What’s the point? Is this worth it?

When you don’t have answers, you start pulling away, or get more critical and everything gets harder. You lose faith in the relationship, and you might miss the opportunity to create something amazing, just on the other side of another big bump in the road.

But when you can’t see beyond that bump, or you’ve been banging your head against a wall that seems impossible to climb millions of times... the logical question is, “Should we keep going?”

Not always. But in many cases the answer is yes we should keep going, but not in the same way.

Muhammad Ali once said, “It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.”

I want to help you see both - the mountain you’re climbing together and the pebbles in your shoe that are making it more painful than it needs to be so that you can walk together with a little more ease. You may find you can recover from hurt faster, reconnect sooner, and build something that feels deeply worth it.

If you’re reading this, it’s because you don’t want to settle for just any relationship.

You want something Real. Sacred. Conscious. A Divine Union. Something amazing, however you define it.

You don’t just want to last a long time - you want to grow closer over time, and partnership offers us the ultimate opportunity to embrace the fullness of our self-expression, our humanity, their humanity, and our reason for being here: connection.

But here’s the paradox:

The deeper you go, the more stuff comes up. The closer you get, the more you expose old wounds and self-protection.

So how do you keep your hearts open through all of that?

How do we make the shift from:

codependency to interdependence?
unhealthy to healthy?
insecure to secure?
dysfunctional to functional?
blame and judgment to curiosity and humility?

Most of us say we want to grow - until growth confronts us. Until our insecurities, hypocrisies, contradictions, and blind spots are thrown in our face by the person we love most.

Then, instinctively, we defend ourselves.

So I want to give you a North Star - a guiding vision that will help you lean in instead of pull away when things get hard.

Because love will come and go. Attraction will come and go. Shared interests won’t always align.

So what keeps you together?

A shared vision.

A reason to do this together.

The most helpful frame I’ve found is this:

We come to partnership to become better human beings and to join as allies in each other’s process of transformation; to metaphorically get naked, to lay our sword and shield at our partner’s feet.

Yet, at the same time, we want comfort, care, support and stability, which are the opposite of growth. We want to relax, be ourselves and not have to change. We don’t always want to be growing.

It’s the parts of us that resist growth that we’re really fighting with, and our partner shines a painfully bright, unrelenting light on these parts don’t they?

So can you learn to hold both acceptance and growth for yourself and for your partner simultaneously?

Because partnership isn’t about perfection (the learning process is messy). It’s about the practice of returning. To yourself. To each other. Again and again.

Because it’s easy to lose ourselves isn’t it?

So that’s what we’re trusting and committing to, this process of returning.

Poet Walt Whitman said it so simply, “We were together, I forget the rest.”

What a beautiful North Star.

Poetry always makes it seem so easy though, doesn’t it?

So what is this mountain you’re climbing together? What’s possible in partnership?

You can understand each other deeply, even when you fundamentally disagree.
You can repair profound hurt and disconnection, and in many cases, even infidelity.
You can finally breathe that sigh of relief when your partner sincerely speaks the words you thought they’d never be able to speak, words that let you know they get it. They get how they contributed to your pain without making themselves a terrible person at the same time.
You can use conflict to deepen trust and strengthen your bond.
You can grow in attraction over time.
You can open your heart fully and let them in.
You can be the safe space that allows them to open their heart to you.
You can enjoy true intimacy - feel close and connected to your partner psychologically, emotionally, physically and spiritually.
You can express the fullness of who you are and have it fully received by your partner.

What Is Intimacy in a Relationship?

Of course we want to feel close, to experience intimacy with our partner in all its forms.

Intimacy has many meanings, so let’s tease it out:

Intimacy is the opposite of self-protection - the absence of offence and defence.

Intimacy is what you experience when nothing is in the way - when you resolve past hurt and resentment so it no longer taints your present.

Intimacy is free of masks - proving, perfecting, performing, pleasing, the “good girl”, the “nice guy”; it’s free of right and wrong.

Intimacy is “I’m feeling you feel me. I’m feeling me, feel you.”

Intimacy is the feeling of an uninterrupted flow of energy between you.

Intimacy is feeling so close that you naturally want to express that closeness through sex.

Emotional intimacy precedes physical intimacy.

Connected Sex is the bonus prize you get to share when you earn intimacy by repairing disconnection over and over again, engaging in the never-ending process of growing together.

It’s all possible.

I see it in the couples I work with every day: what they think is impossible becoming possible, as we turn concepts into experiences.

I admire the courageous couples I get to guide and witness in that evolutionary developmental process.

Well this all sounds good right? So what’s the catch?

Well, just like in any video game or great adventure story, there’s a hero (that’s you), and every level there’s a boss - the dragon in the story - is your test.

Each level has a harder boss. Each level must be earned by levelling up your abilities.

Of course, we’d all prefer to avoid the dragon altogether!

But the ultimate reward, intimacy - feeling close and connected with your Sweetheart, infinitely deepening in relationship with them - has the ultimate test… and you have to earn it.

When things get really hard, and it’s easier to pull away than to lean in, when it’s easier to blame than take responsibility for your part, the hardest truth is:

It’s far more powerful to focus on living in your own integrity, to becoming who you want to be, than to point out where your partner is out of theirs.

It’s of course much easier to focus on blaming them for their shortcomings than look in the mirror and directly face how you’re falling short, or how you’re part of creating the very dynamic you’re complaining about.

That’s the humbling work.

So let’s look up the mountain at that North Star together, shall we? The questions are:

How can I be the parent, partner and lover I want to be?
What would that actually take? Where do I have room to grow?
How bad do I want it?
How can I make things a little easier instead of harder?
What’s actually at the root of my reactivity?
How gentle and compassionate can I be on myself and my partner along the journey?

Why Isn't Better Communication Enough?

Let’s set the stage for your journey into a new paradigm of partnership.

Imagine the old paradigm of partnership is represented by a car. Longevity is the destination, and a car gets you there.

But intimacy represents a new destination - the moon.

Trying to learn “better communication” is like adding shiny upgrades to your old car. No matter how many upgrades you make, you can’t get to the moon in a car.

To create true lasting intimacy, you actually need an entirely new vehicle.

That vehicle isn’t made up of new communication skills.

In order to get to where you want to go, you actually need new belief systems, insights that change the way you think and experience reality, and new experiences.

Because “better relationships” are about much more than “better communication”.

You can’t communicate what you’re not aware of. And you can’t get to the moon in a car.

In order to go to the moon (create lifelong intimacy), you must become a new person (change the relationship you have not just with your partner, but yourself), learn how to de-escalate conflict, repair past hurt and resentment, and negotiate win-win agreements (without compromise) that include all of your needs and concerns.

If you’re ready for this level of partnership, to be the hero in your own journey of partnership, I’m excited to go on this great adventure with you, to show you the pebbles in your shoes to make this never-ending process of deepening in partnership a little easier, as you join hands, allies in each other’s transformation and learn to hold each other’s hearts with care.

This is what I want every couple to know, so please pass it on!

Frequently Asked Questions

What is intimacy in a relationship?

Intimacy in a relationship is the experience of feeling close and connected with nothing in the way. To me, it's the opposite of self-protection, the absence of offence and defence, and it's free of masks like proving, perfecting, performing and pleasing. Researchers describe a similar idea: intimacy grows when you feel understood, validated and cared for by your partner (Reis, Clark & Holmes, 2004).

Does emotional intimacy come before physical intimacy?

Very often, yes. When you feel emotionally close, you naturally want to express that closeness physically. When hurt and resentment are in the way, desire tends to shut down, which I explore in my article on sex and intimacy in couples therapy.

Can a relationship recover from infidelity?

Many couples do repair after infidelity, though there are no guarantees. In my experience, it tends to become possible when the partner who was unfaithful can truly understand how they contributed to their partner's pain, without collapsing into making themselves a terrible person, and both partners are committed to growing. If you're wondering whether your relationship can come back from deep hurt, my article on whether there's hope for your marriage may help.

Why isn't better communication enough?

You can't communicate what you're not aware of. Better communication skills are like upgrades to an old car, and lifelong intimacy is more like going to the moon. Getting there usually takes new beliefs, new insights and new experiences, along with learning to de-escalate conflict, repair past hurt and negotiate win-win agreements. When couples only work on communication, they often end up having the same fight over and over again.

What does it mean to be allies in each other's transformation?

It means you come to partnership to grow, and you support each other's growth instead of fighting it. You learn to hold acceptance and growth at the same time, for yourself and your partner, and you keep returning to each other again and again. I write more about balancing acceptance and growth in my article on unconditional love and boundaries in a relationship.

Want support with this in your relationship? Reach out to work with me.